Four major technology firms including Apple and Google have agreed to pay a total of $324m to settle a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to hold down salaries in Silicon Valley, Reuters has reported, citing sources familiar with the deal. The case has been closely watched due to the potentially high damages award and a steady disclosure of emails in which Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and some of their Silicon Valley rivals hatched plans to avoid poaching each other’s prized engineers. The settlement was disclosed in a court filing earlier on Thursday, which did not spell out terms.